Stephanie Zaleski, PhD Faculty Profile

Stephanie  Zaleski, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

  • E-mail: stephanie.zaleski@csueastbay.edu
  • Phone: (510) 885-3452
    Phone: (341) 336-6537
  • Office Hours: M 10-11 am, W 1-2 pm, or by appointment
  • Vitae:
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Stephanie Zaleski joined the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at CSU East Bay in Fall 2020. She obtained her BA in Biochemistry from Barnard College in 2011 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2016, where her thesis work focused on the combination of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy with electrochemistry to study single molecule electron transfer and develop new sensors for drug analysis. Between 2016-2020, she held postdoctoral research positions at multiple cultural institutions across the US, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and Northwestern University – Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts. 

My research group works at the interface of analytical, physical and materials chemistry. We study the fundamental optical properties of plasmonic nanoparticle assemblies and apply the chemical sensitivity of vibrational spectroscopies such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to molecular sensing problems relevant to art conservation, point of care sensing and environmental monitoring.

  • PhD, Northwestern University
  • BA, Barnard College

Not teaching this semester.

Select Publications

  1. S. Zaleski, E. Montagnino*, L. B. Brostoff, C. L. Ward-Bamford, F. France, I. S. Muller, A. C. Buechele, M. Loew. “Application of Fiber Optic Reflectance Spectroscopy for the Detection of Historical Glass Deterioration.” Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 103 (1), 158-166 (2020)
  2. Zaleski, Y. Takahashi, M. Leona. “Natural and Synthetic Arsenic Sulfide Pigments in Japanese Woodblock Prints of the Late Edo Period.” Heritage Science, 6 (32), (2018)
  3. Zaleski, K. C. Clark*, M. Smith*, J. Y. Eilert, M. Doty, R. P. Van Duyne. “Rapid Identification and Quantification of Intravenous Therapy Drugs using Normal Raman Spectroscopy and Electrochemical Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy” Anal. Chem., 89, 2497-2504 (2017)
  4. F. Pozzi, S. Zaleski, F. Casadio, R. P. Van Duyne. “SERS Discrimination of Closely Related Molecules: A Systematic Study of Natural Red Dyes in Binary Mixtures” J. Phys. Chem. C, 120 (37), 21017-21026 (2016)
  5. S. Zaleski, M. F. Cardinal, J. M. Klingsporn, R. P. Van Duyne. “Observing Single, One-Electron Heterogeneous Charge Transfer Reactions” J. Phys. Chem. C. 119 (50), 28226-28234 (2015)
*denotes undergraduate contribution